Muslims believe that Mohammed
is a descendant of Ishmael. As proof of their position, Muslims refer to
genealogies written around 770-775 A.D. by Ibn Ishak.

What he has
written is simply not true.Ishmaelite
tribes, especially the tribe of Nebaioth from which, according to Ibn Ishak,
Mohammed is said to have come, were nomadic tribes who lived in the Sinai and Fertile Crescent deserts. These tribes disappeared after
the 7th century B.C.

Mohammed's family was a Sabaean Yemeni family, while the
Ishmaelites, who lived in the deserts of the Fertile Crescent, became extinct
many centuries before Mohammed's family left Yemen.

Historians say that the family
of Mohammed was afamily which lived in
Saba-Yemen. In the 5th century A.D., Qusayy Bin Kilab, the 8th
ancestor of Mohammed, gathered an alliance of many Yemeni families forming
Quraish, the tribe from which Mohammed later came.These families only came to occupy Mecca in the 5th
century A.D. The city of Mecca
was built by the tribe of Khuzaa'h in the 4th century A.D.

Mohammed’s family is not connected to any
Ishmaelite tribe because Mohammed’s family didn’t leave Yemen until the
5thcentury A.D., and that’s about1,100 yearsafter the Ishmaelites disappeared. Mohammed’s tribe could not have lived
in the same locations as the Ishmaelite tribes at any time throughout history.

The genealogy fabricated by Ibn-Ishak contradicts the sayings of
Mohammed, who expressed his ignorance about his ancestors prior to his 17th
ancestor.

Ibn Ishak was considered by
the Muslim scholars of his time as being guilty of forgery and fabricating
false genealogies.[1][i]

Long before
Ibn Ishak, Muslims who lived in Mohammed’s own time also fabricated genealogies
in an attempt to connect Mohammed to the descendants of Ishmael.Mohammed, himself, rejected all of these
false genealogies, and he put limits regarding the genealogy of his ancestors.
Regarding Mohammed’s own rejection of the false genealogies, Amru bin al-As
wrote:

Mohammed genealogized himself regarding his
ancestors until he reached al-Nather bin Kinaneh, then he said, “anyone who
claimed otherwise or added further ancestors, has lied.”[2][ii]

By this, Mohammed confessed
that neither he, nor anyone else, knew about his ancestors beyond al-Nather bin
Kinaneh. Nather bin Kinaneh is the 17th ancestor in the genealogy which
Mohammed recognized as true. Other narrations of the customs, or sayings, of
Mohammed, called Hadiths, show Mohammed refused to be genealogized prior to
Maad, معدwho some suggested, was the 4th ancestor
prior to al-Nather bin Kinaneh.[3][iii]

When
we look at the ancestors of Mohammed, it’s reasonable to estimate 30 years for
each generation of the 17 ancestors of Mohammed. Therefore, we can conclude
that Mohammed knew about the genealogy of his tribe as far back as about 510
years. If we want to add the other four ancestors that Mohammed listed, we
would go back 630 years. The truth is, nobody knew beyond such date. How, then,
could Ibn Ishak and his followers reliably document a genealogy back to
Ishmael, who lived in 2050 B.C.?This
gives approximately 2000 years between the 21st ancestor of Mohammed and
Ishmael. How could Ibn Ishak claim the Ishmaelites lived in Mecca during this
period and give details about their history when Mohammed himself said that
nobody knew about his relatives prior to his 17th or 21st ancestor?Mecca was not even in existence during this
period, as we have clearly demonstrated. Ibn Ishak’s genealogy contradicts
Mohammed’s own claims that he did not know his ancestors farther back than
al-Nather bin Kinaneh, the 17th ancestor before himself.

All the genealogies that appeared at the time of Mohammed were considered
by Mohammed and his close followers to be false.

Many versions of Hadith of
Mohammed coming from the followers of Mohammed all report that Mohammed opposed
to be genelogized until Ishmael. All his closest contemporaries and followers considered
the genealogies appearing at his time to be false. Among the people who
reported Mohammed’s opposition to such genealogies were his wife, Aisheh, and
his cousin, Ibn Abbas, one of the most important reporters of Mohammed’s
Hadith.[4][iv]Ibn Ishak went
against what all these people had said by creating genealogies which connect
the ancestors of Mohammed with Ishmael.

Ibn Ishak altered the genealogies listed by Moses in Genesis; he
inserted Arabic names from his time and contradicted the history regarding
Amalek.

The fabrication went beyond
this. The genealogies created by Ibn Ishak and others who came after him
inserted Arabic names into the genealogies which we find in Genesis.For example, Ibn Ishak inserted the Arabic name
“Ya’rab,” which comes from the word“Arab,”
listing him as the son of “ Khahtan.” Ibn Ishak then replaced Khahtan for
Joktan, mentioned in the book of Genesis as the son of Eber, the son of
Arphaxad, and the third son of Shem, the son of Noah.[5][v] We know that the term “Arab” didn’t exist until the 10th
century B.C.How, then, could it be
inserted into history shortly following Noah, perhaps around 5500 B.C.?

Ibn Ishak
went still farther. He changed the name of Lud, the fourth son of Shem, to
Luth. He then made Luth the father of Amalek, who fathered the Amalekites. He
also claimed that Amalek and his tribe lived in Mecca, and he claimed that the
ancient Egyptians were also descendants of Amalek. He then made Amalek’s
original name “Arib,” just to connect him with the Arabs.[6][vi] Indirectly, through these false genealogies, Ibn Ishak
claimed that Mecca existed at the time of Noah and his grandson, Lud. This
directly contradicts the historical facts we examined before, showing that
Mecca didn’t exist until the 4th century A.D.

Amalek is a
descendant of Esau, the son of Isaac. Genesis 36:12 states that Timma was a
concubine of Eliphaz, the first born of Esau, and that she bore Amalek to
Eliphaz. Amalek became the father of the Amalekites, which was an Edomite tribe
which originally lived in southern Jordan, but moved to the eastern part of the
Sinai, as was attested at the time of Moses. The Amalekites became extinct
after the 10th century B.C. There’s no mention of Amalek in any inscription or
in the writings of any Greek historian, which would indicate that the tribe
lived in central, western or northern Arabia.

Refuting the Claim About Jurhum

Ibn Ishak claimed that the
tribe of Jurhum lived in Mecca as far back as the time of Abraham. He also claimed
that Jurhum was the grandson of Joktan, the son of Eber. He further claimed
that Jurhum’s original name was “Hathrem.”[7][vii] The significance of the name “Hathrem” is that it is
characteristic of Arabic-style names used at the time of Ibn Ishak, which was
in the 8th century A.D. The names given in the inscriptions of Yemen and
northern Arabia are totally different from the style of the names given in Ibn
Ishak’s genealogies, which reflect the names of his generation. It is a fact
that no inscription, no Greek or Roman historian, and no geographer who visited
Arabia, ever mentioned a tribe called Jurhum. The first mention of Jurhum we
find it in a poesy of Ummyya bin Abi al-Salet, the maternal cousin of Mohammed,
who also claimed to be a prophet. The poem attributed to Ummyya says “the Lord
of Ad and Jurhum”[8][viii]. First of all, the poem most probably was composed after
the event of Islam, because we do not have in Jahiliyah pre-Islam any mention
about Jurhum. The idea that many of the Jahiliyah poetry were added after Islam
is embraced by great scholars such as Tah Hussein, the famous Egyptian scholar.
Secondly, for the case of argument, if we want to admit the originality of such
verse, we could not build upon it a history that a nation called Jurhum existed
in Arabia since the time of Abraham, because Ummyya was contemporary of
Mohammed, and he can't be a source of documentation about a nation which would
have existed prior to his time by 2700 years. Because
there were no archiving methods and no printing like we have today, it’s
commonly accepted that tradition can be considered accurate only if it was
written within four centuries of the writers. If Jurhum existed as tribe
in Arabia, it could have been a small tribe that appeared some time after the
Christian era. Since no classical writer mentioned this tribe, if existed, it
should have been insignificant. Ummyyia's poems are full of myths: such as his
claim that the Queen of Saba, who visited king Solomon was his aunt; he claimed
this to justify his claim to the role of prophecy. In addition, Ummyyia had
relationship with a Jinn-devil, who used to instruct him, which proves that he
was a part of the occult religion of Arabia. If we want to accept this poem as
composed by him, how can we rely on poems of such personality to establish
history dating back to 2700 years before his time?

Enormous historical mistakes exist in the Quran, and the
genealogies created after the rise of Islam, to support the Quran.Some examples are the genealogies regarding Thamud
and Nimrod.

There are other serious
historical mistakes in the Islamic genealogies regarding the tribe of Thamud.
Thamud is an Arabic tribe which appeared in the 8th century B.C., as
was attested at the time of the Assyrian King Sargon II through his
Inscriptions. Thamud later lost its political power about the 5th century A.D.
The Islamic genealogies attempted to back statements made in the Qur’an which
placed Thamud and Ad – another Arabian tribe which appeared after Thamud-as
tribes which came right after Noah. So they created a father for the tribe of
Thamud and named him “Thamud.” Then they claimed he was the grandson of Shem,
the son of Noah.[9][ix]All this was
created just to fit the narration of the Qur’an.

The Qur’an claims that the tribe of Thamud was the third
generation after Noah,( The Qur'an made the Arabian tribe of Ad to
be second generation after Noah's generation; then Thamud as the third
generation, See Surah 7:69; 23:31,32;14:8,9)and it was condemned by Allah to be punished by a wind. (The wind was
the god who brought judgment in Zoroastrianism.We
know this is also an enormous historical mistake. Not only did Thamud not
appear until the 8th century B.C., but the official history, as shown by
Assyrian inscriptions, demonstrates that Thamud continued to exist during the 7th
century B.C. Also, writings by various Greek and Roman geographers who wrote
about Arabia, said Thamud continued until the 5th century A.D. as a
politically-organized tribe which occupied a large part of northern
Arabia.No wind destroyed the tribe, as
the Qur’an claims.

This should
be enough to convince us, but there’s yet another enormous historical mistake
in the Islamic genealogies. This one concerns Nimrod. According to Genesis
10:8-11, Nimrod was the first builder of the old cities of Mesopotamia. He was
the son of Cush, the son of Ham, the son of Noah.We can date him to between
5000 and 4500 B.C.Islamic genealogies
correctly state that Nimrod was the son of Cush, but incorrectly state that he
lived around the time of Abraham.[10][x] This false claim about Nimrod was made to conform to a
mistake in the Qur’an, which made Nimrod reign at the time of Abraham. The Qur’an
says Nimrod persecuted Abraham and cast him into a fire which did not harm him.
We read this in Surah al-Anbiya' 21:51-70 and Surah al-Safat 37:95. The
narration of the Qur’an is taken from the Jewish book called Midrash Rabbah,
chapter 17.

We urge
Muslims to study history, and to compare the facts to what they have been told
in the Qur’an and in Islamic tradition. The claims of Mohammed, the Qur’an and
Islam are clearly unfounded. Even if such historical errors were accepted by
the followers in Mohammed’s time, we now have so much more evidence which
proves them in error. How can anyone embrace these enormous mistakes, when a
simple study of history demonstrates how wrong they are.

No one has the right to claim he descended from a specific man
who lived 2,000 years before him, unless he has written documents which testify
to his claim. In Mohammed’s case, those documents simply do not exist. We have
no proof that the ancestors of Mohammed were the descendants of Ishmael

I will continue to analyze the
Islamic genealogies which began to appear in the 8th century A.D., and which
endeavor to connect Mohammed with Ishmael. I already quoted the Hadith of
Mohammed, in which he prohibited any genealogy which described him any further
back than Nather bin Kinaneh, who lived 17 generations before him. Other Hadith
of Mohammed state that he didn’t want to be genealogized prior to Maadمعد ,which some suggested to be the fourth person
prior to Nather bin Kinaneh. The many genealogies which appeared since the 8th
century A.D. confirm the same information, that the genealogy of Mohammed is
limited to probably 17 generations before him, but certainly not more than 21
ancestors.

Why is this significant in
our search for Mohammed’s genealogy?In
the first place, Mohammed himself confessed that he didn’t know of any ancestor
before his 17th ancestor.Secondly,
after the 17th generation, we begin to notice the differences in these
genealogies.After Maad bin Adnan,
number 21, the genealogies begin to contradict themselves with big differences,
reflecting the fact that the authors of such genealogies couldn’t find
resources on which to build their genealogies.That’s because Mohammed prohibited his contemporaries from going any
further back than his 17th ancestor. Thus, every one fabricated Mohammed’s
genealogy differently from the other.

Another interesting feature of their
work is that all of the biographers used Arabic-style names of the 8th and 9th
centuries A.D., but they applied the names to the generation in which Ishmael
lived. As an example, we find a genealogy mentioned by Tabari, in which the author
of the genealogy said Nebaioth, the first-born of Ishmael, begot a son under
the name of al-Awamالعوام ,
and al-Awam to beget al-Saboh الصابوح.
Notice the Arabic names. In the genealogy, designations of al-Awam, and
al-Saboh, respectively, follow the names.[11][xi]We don’t find this
style even in the inscriptions of North Arabia before the Christian era.Instead, we see these names are of the same
style as the Umayyad and Abassid periods,
after the 8th and 9th centuries A.D.( the Abassid period began in the year 750
A.D.).

When we
return to the genealogy fabricated by Ibn Ishak, on which other Muslim writers
built in more recent times, we notice his Arabization of the genealogy. As I
stated previously, he listed the son of Nabaioth, first-born of Ishmael, as
Yashjub يشجب,
his son is Yarob يعرب.Yarob is, in itself, a word derived from the
word Arab. Ibn Ishak did this in order to make Ishmael appear to be an Arab.
Though we know that the word “Arab” was not known before the 10th century B.C.,
this style for names like Yarob and Yashjub is characteristic of the 8th
century A.D., in which Ibn Ishak lived.A common characteristic to all these genealogies is that they claim
Mohammed was descended from Ishmael, and they all give a limited number of
ancestors between Mohammed and Ishmael.

There are 2,670 years between Ishmael and Mohammed; a large span
of time which cannot be covered with only 40 generations.

Ibn Ishak listed 40 ancestors.
He wasn’t aware, when he fabricated his genealogy, that 40 ancestors are not
sufficient to cover the great time span between Ishmael and Mohammed. Ishmael
lived around 2050 B.C., while Mohammed emigrated to Medina around 620 A.D.
Therefore, there are about 2,670 years between Ishmael and Mohammed. How can
this great period be covered by only 40 ancestors?

By contrast,
the Gospel of Matthew reports the genealogy of Jesus Christ as far back as
Abraham. We find 42 ancestors between Abraham and Jesus, though it’s a period
of only l,950 years. The genealogy of Mohammed must account for another 720
years.

Another thing
to consider is that a Jewish generation is longer than an Arabian generation.
Consider the ancestors of Isaac from Abraham to King David. Many of these men
fathered their first-born when they were 40 or 50 years old. We see that
between the captivity in Babylon in 586 B.C., and the birth of Jesus, there are
14 generations. This shows that the Jewish generation in that period was around
41 years. But when we come to the Arabian generations, we can’t allow 41 years
for each generation. Scholars consider an Arabian generation to have been about
20 years,because Arabians married when
they were about 17-20 years old, due to weather and their cultural environment.

The Archaeology of Arabia Confirmed the Relative Brevity of an
Arabian Generation

Archaeology confirms the lower
figures for the generations in Arabia. If we study the series of kings in
Arabia, both in northern Arabia and Yemen, we come to verify the shortness of
Arabian generations when compared to generations in other places, such as
Israel. For example, the series of rulers in Saba and Himyar of Yemen begin
with the Karibil A. in the 9th century B.C., and run through Maadikarib III,
King of Himyar, who was number 102, the last one in the series. He reigned
between 575- 577 A.D.[12][xii] We see 102 generations of kings in a span of about 1,400
years. Remembering that a few of these rulers were brothers of other kings in
the same generation, we find between 75 to 80 generations, and we conclude that
the average Arabian generation was about 17-20 years.

Considering
the shortness of the Arabian generation, let’s suppose that each generation in
Mohammed’s genealogy is 20 years. Since Mohammed is separated from Abraham and
Ishmael by 2,670 years, there must have been a little over 133 generations
between them. When we do the math, we have 2,670 years divided by 20 years,
which equals 133 and one-half generations, not 35 or 40, as claimed by Ibn
Ishak and the others who fabricated genealogies for the ancestors of Mohammed.
We see how unprepared and unwise they were to claim Mohammed is descended from
Abraham and his son, Ishmael.

Except for the lineage of Jesus, which was documented by written
books of the Bible through the centuries, no other family in history has ever
accounted for their ancestors over a period of 2,000 years.

Let’s look at this another
way. If we assume that the 21st ancestor of Mohammed is known,and if we make a generation 25 years rather
than 20 years, then ancestor number 21 would still be 525 years distant from
Mohammed. This means that the 21st ancestor of Mohammed lived between 50-70
A.D. This would make the gap between him and Ishmael about 2,000 years.

Except for
the linage of Jesus, no family in history had ever verified their ancestors
over a period of 2,000 years. The family of Joseph, who was from the royal
lineage of Judah, and the family of Mary, who was from the same tribe, could
account for their ancestors as far back as Abraham. Because there have been
documented, written books of the Bible in each generation, the facts are
verified again and again. They give testimony to the promise God made to
Abraham and to Isaac, son of Abraham, which God then confirmed to almost every
member of the Messianic genealogy. God’s divine promise accompanied others in
the Messianic line, such as Isaac, his son, Jacob, and Jacob’s son, Judah, as
it was recorded by Moses in the book of Genesis, the first book of the Bible.

The genealogy continued to be recorded in
many other books of the Bible. For example, we see God confirming the
continuity of the Messianic line in the book of Ruth through Boaz, one of the
ancestors of King David. The promise of God concerning the birth of a divine
child as Savior was confirmed to David and his son, Solomon, then to many other
kings, until we reach the last king who governed Judah at the time of Babylon’s
captivity, around 586 B.C. The confirmation of God’s promise continued after
the captivity of Babylon. In fact, God renewed His promise to another ruler in
David’s royal line, Zerubbabel, who became governor of Judah around 538 B.C.

Many prophets
prophesied God’s incarnation in human form after Zerubbabel was governor. The
series of prophesies continue until we reach the prophet Malachi, who wrote the
last book of the Old Testament around 436 B.C. The first chapter of Malachi
begins with these words:

Behold I send my messenger, and he will prepare
the way before me. And the Lord, whom you seek, will suddenly come to His
temple.

It is clear that the God of
the Old Testament, who spoke to Malachi and to all the prophets, was the One
who promised to come, announcing the sending of a messenger to prepare the way
for Him as a sign of His coming. This messenger was John the Baptist, whom God
called in the same generation in which Christ was incarnated, and who testified
in John 1:26, 27 concerning Jesus. He said:

I baptize with water, but there stands one
among you whom you do not know. It is he who, coming after me, is preferred
before me, whose sandal strap I am not worthy to untie.

Later, when John was asked by
the Jews if He was the Messiah, said in Matthew 3:2 that he was “the voice of
one crying in the wilderness.”He was
the one who came to prepare the way before the Lord, fulfilling the prophecy of
Isaiah 40:3. John the Baptist pointed to Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of God,
and the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

There is a complete continuity of documented records and
historical testimonies regarding the Messianic genealogy of Jesus.

The royal lineage continued to
be well-known between the time of Malachi and Jesus. In fact, rulers in Judah
continued their rule in Jerusalem at the time of the Maccabees during the 2nd
century B.C. This means that the period, which was covered only by oral
tradition until we reached Mary and Joseph, doesn’t exceed 120-140 years. That
was a short time in which families would know about the father of their
grandfather who lived 140 years earlier.

When we consider John the
Baptist, of whom there is a written testimony, not just in the New Testament,
but also in historical literature, such as the writings of Josephus Flavius ,
the Jewish-Roman historian, we have a complete continuity of documented records
and historical testimonies regarding the Messianic genealogy of Jesus.

The absence of any record between Mohammed and Ishmael which
would support the Islamic claim that Mohammed is descended from Ishmael.

On the other hand, when we come
to the family of Mohammed, whose oldest disputable ancestor was 21 people
distant from him, and who lived in Yemen in the first century A.D., how can we
connect Mohammed’s 21stancestor with Ishmael who lived in Sinai 2,000
years before him? No Arabian documents written before Mohammed even allude to
such a claim.

Islam also claims that
Abraham and Ishmael founded the city of Mecca, but Mecca was not in existence
prior to the 4th century A.D. There’s no historical document written during the
2,000 years between Mohammed’s 21st ancestor and the time of Ishmael, which
claims the 21st ancestor of Mohammed was a descendent of Ishmael. And there is
no credible document written between the time of Mohammed’s 21st ancestor and
his own time.

As if this
were not enough evidence that Mohammed couldn’t have descended from Ishmael, we
have the testimony of thousands of inscriptions, annals and archaeological
records which speak about hundreds of rulers in Arabia who belonged to many
different tribes, but no inscription or record includes material on any of the
ancestors of Mohammed. This can only confirm that Mohammed’s family was an
ordinary and unknown family like any other family in Yemen, and that it never
ruled in any city in western Arabia, even though Islamic tradition claims it
ruled in Mecca.

The Impossibility of the 21st Ancestor of Mohammed
Claiming to be Descended from Ishmael

Because
Mohammed came from an average Yemeni family, how can his 21st ancestor possess
information about ancestors who lived at the time of Abraham?Although printing was invented in the 15th
century, and archiving and documentation has since become more organized, and
easier, than in previous centuries, none of the families in our generation know
the names of their ancestors who lived 1,000 years ago. How, then, could an
ordinary man, such as the 21st ancestor of Mohammed, who lived around the 1st
century A.D., know anything about an ancestor who lived 2000 years before him?

From Assyrian records dated between the 9th
and 7th century B.C., we know that Ishmaelite tribes lived as nomads in Sinai
and the Fertile Crescent. But none of these records include the name Ishmael.
No inscription shows that they called any person by that name. This
demonstrates to us that they didn’t know their lineage from Ishmael. Otherwise,
they would certainly have been proud to be his descendants, and they would have
recorded Ishmael in each subsequent generation, just as the Israelites recorded
Isaac as part of their Israelite religious heritage in every ancient book they
wrote.

Because Ishmael received no spiritual call
from God, his only historical descendants were the twelve tribes which
descended from his sons. In consequent generations, even his sons' descendents
forgot about him, including his name, even though the time between Ishmael and
these tribes wasonly about 1,200 years
(between the 7th and 9th century B.C.). Since this is the case for the true
descendants of Ishmael, how can a man who lived in Yemen, far from where
Ishmael lived, conclude he descended from Ishmael who lived 2,000 years before
him? If the Ishmaelites themselves were not aware of their ancestry from
Ishmael, who would have told the 21st ancestor of Mohammed that he
was descended from Ishmael?

There is no proof that Mohammed’s
ancestors,number 17 or number 21, ever
claimed to be descendants from Ishmael. There’s no written document before
Mohammed that make such a claim. Even if such document were to have existed,
still this ancestor would have no right to claim descendancy from a man who
lived 2,000 years before him, without written documents in each generation to
prove his case.

It is clear that the claim of Islam about
Mohammed coming from Ishmael progeny is farther from the truth than if I
claimed that I came from the line of Julius Cesar who lived 2,000 years before
my time. Though I would claim that my 21st ancestor was from Julius Cesar, I
have nothing to confirm my claim. Such a claim is impossible to verify by
anyone living in our generation. That’s why no one today, even in Rome itself,
claims descendancy from Julius Cesar, nor did any Italian who lived 1,000 years
ago dare to make such a claim. It’s understood that even 1,000 years without
any documented testimony renders the claim ridiculous.

It was a common custom in Arabia at the time
of Mohammed for many who claimed to be prophets to claim that they were
descended from Biblical figures.

Such claim, if anyone would embrace it,
would be considered as transgressing honesty and logic. Yet, there were those
people in Arabia, specifically at the time of Mohammed, who knowingly held to
the claim that they were descendents of Biblical figures. Men who claimed to be
prophets often claimed to descend from known figures in history, or from people
mentioned in the Bible. Umayya bin abi al-Salt, a maternal cousin of Mohammed,
claimed to be a prophet. He said the Queen of Sheba, who visited Solomon, was
his aunt.[13][xiii]He said this to
establish that he was from the line of her brother. Also Tubb'a (the Yemeni
leader who ruled between A.D. 410 and 435 and occupied Mecca) claimed to be a
prophet and claimed that the Queen of Sheba was his aunt.[14][xiv]Throughout history
we have had people like Umayya bin Abi al-Salt, who wanted to be prophets over
their people.They made their claims
because knew that many around them were naive and ignorant and wouldn’t refute
their claims.

Although false prophets in Arabia had the
audacity to claim they were offspring from a man who lived 1,000 years before
them, Mohammed claimed to descend from Ishmael who lived 2,700 years before
him, yet without any historical written document. My heart goes out to our
Muslims friends who continue to trust their eternal destiny to a claim which is
against logic and history.

Mohammed claimed to have ascended to heaven, met Abraham, and
learned that he was a true copy of Abraham, so as to convince his followers
that he was descended from Abraham.

We saw
how Mohammed claimed that Ishmael was his ancestor. He claimed this, even though
the time between Mohammed and Ishmael was about 2,700 years, and there were no
written documents at any time to support this claim.

But
there is more involved than supporting an unhistorical claim. Mohammed
connected himself to Abraham by saying he was a physically-true copy of
Abraham, because he had ascended to heaven where he encountered many Biblical
figures –and among them was Abraham.

He
also claimed that heaven has seven layers, copying the idea embraced by many
religions and sects of his time, such as Gnosticism, Manicheism and
Zoroastrianism. Gnostic literature makes man responsible for each of the sky’s
seven layers. Mohammed claimed the same. Mohammed placed Abraham in the sky’s
seventh layer,[15][xv] where he ruled over believers who did more works, and
performed more religious rites, than the inhabitants of the lower layers.

In order to persuade his followers that he was the offspring of
Abraham, Mohammed claimed that he was a true copy of Abraham.

When his
followers asked Mohammed what Abraham looked like, he told them that Abraham
was a copy of Mohammed himself. He told them:

I did not see a man similar to him like your
friend, nor is your friend likened to any person like him.[16][xvi] (By “friend,” Mohammed meant himself.)

Al-Bukhari,
the authoritative book of Mohammed’s Hadith, quotes Mohammed as saying, “I am
the most likened son to Abraham.”[17][xvii] Mohammed wanted to persuade his followers that he was the
offspring of Abraham, so he claimed that physically he was a copy of Abraham.
Isaac did not dare to make such a claim, though he was Abraham’s son, and his
mother was Abraham’s step sister.Neither did Jacob, or any of his descendents who were close to Abraham’s
time, claim that they were a physical copy of Abraham. How could a man who lived
2,700 years after Abraham make such claim?